A friend who knows my fascination with cocktails brought me part of a bottle of Aperol to try. It was a new liqueur for me. Here’s what wikipedia says about it.

Its ingredients are, among others, bitter orange, gentian, rhubarb, and cinchona. . .
Although it looks, tastes, and smells much like Campari, Aperol has an alcohol content of 11%—less than half of Campari.

The color is a neon red-orange, almost unnatural but in the nicest possible way.

And yes, I know that it’s Summer in South Texas but I’m calling this a Spring cocktail because I think it describes it better: floral, tangy, slightly sweet, refreshing, light. In Summer down here it makes more sense to dive into a bucket of frozen watermelon margaritas.

(I make my own lemon vodka with Meyer lemons, the peel and the juice so it’s a tart liquere. I don’t think that lemoncello would be a good substitute since it’s pretty sweet. You could add a shot of lemon juice to tart it up.)

2 parts good tequila

Consider rimming your glass with salt.

Put everything in a cocktail shaker with a bunch of ice and shake 40 times. Pour into a glass without straining. Save the other half of the grapefruit ’cause you’re gonna want another.

Maybe I’ll get a photo of the next one but you have to catch them quickly before they’re gone.

I’m planning how to handle high-end cocktails in our teeny trailer so I’m looking for recipes that consist of one teeny bottle of this, half a teeny bottle of that, etc. The problem is finding those teeny bottles with the high-end liquors and exotic liquers that I use. I think about assembling kits as gifts with the recipe, bottles and cocktail shaker in an old-fashioned style metal lunchbox

This needs a picture but the recipe is:

1 airplane-sized bottle of Captain Morgan Black rum

juice from 3 cuties (those little mandarin oranges that are all over the grocery at this time of year)

1/2 oz. Stirrings ginger liquer

1 oz. good Curacao

Fill a shaker 1/2 full of ice and put all the stuff in it. Shake, shake, shake! Pour in a large old fashioned glass and enjoy. And, as with all high end, high proof cocktails, your mouth won’t think one is enough but your head might. See who wins.

This last weekend, I drank for charity. I attended the second annual San Antonio Cocktail Conference. Surprisingly, I learned a lot about cocktail theory — what makes a good cocktail.

High proof liquor makes better cocktails than lower proofs because the flavor is stronger.

The word alcohol has the same root as alchemy.

There are 5 dimensions to consider when mixing and designing cocktails:

The dominating flavor

Mouth feel

The balance between sweet and dry

Contrast of flavors

Complexity

Here’s one of my favorite cocktail recipes, shared from the woman who manages the bar at the W Hotel in Austin.

1 part fresh lemon juice

1 part frambois liquere

1 part ginger liquere

2 parts whiskey

Shake vigorously with ice and serve over ice. Quite lovely. I didn’t even know really that I was a cocktail person. But what was even more surprising is that Eric, who is a total beer person, discovered that a cocktail or two is a lovely thing. There were some really grand bartenders here, who have elevated the cocktail to a gourmet event.

I spoke to Adam, the bar manager at Barriba Cantina, who told me that St. Germain is the bartender’s ketchup. And his favorite cocktail recipe is:

1 tequila

2 champagne

1/2 St. Germain

1/2 fresh grapefruit juice

That wasn’t what he was serving however, but I’m going to try it because the cocktail that he created was also wonderful. It was:

1 fresh grapefruit juice

1/2 St. Germain

2 whiskey

Shake, again vigorously and pour over ice. Top with 1 part green Chartreuse and add a large piece of grapefruit peel, which you run around the rim of the glass and then place inside. He said, “Don’t bother with little twists. If you use a big one (about 1 x 3) people can also use it as a stirrer.” Hmmm.

How did I recall these recipes in a sea of liquor and cocktails? Evernote!!!!

There were many notable discoveries over the two evenings I spent of the three that were offered. And some things that seemed to me to go beyond adventure into just plain weird, .like the tea sandwich that was white bread, sardine, salami and kim chi. Not a bad taste but lordy, the breath that came back from that would remove paint.

I also was able to recall through great examples, what it was like to be young and foolish, from the beautiful young women in cruel shoes all over the stairs at the Majestic to the painfully embarrassing drunks with more money than sense. I have been those people in my past minus the more money portion. Okay, maybe that’s not true for I surely have had more money than sense, even some times when my pockets were empty.